Various attempts have been made to provide therapeutic pads with magnetic alternating polarities to increase blood flow and therefore, accelerate healing of injured body parts. The technology is based on principles of electricity and magnetism set forth in Faraday's Law of Magnetic Induction and the Hall Effect. Basically, these principles establish the fact that charged particles experience a force acting upon them when they move through a magnetic field in a perpendicular direction. Since human blood is replete with ions and electrolytes, it is an ideal carrier of charged particles. A blood vessel exposed to a proper alignment of alternating magnetic fields could experience an induced voltage of sufficient strength to produce a mild alternating current which could generate enough heat to cause a widening of the blood vessel and thus an increase in blood flow.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,489,711 of Latzke, alternating stripes of north and south magnetic poles are unidirectional in pole orientation. Latzke '711 provides parallel stripe-shaped poles in a linear arrangement that do not exhibit therapeutic effects on blood vessels that are not extending substantially transversely thereto.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,549,532 of Baermann either concentric rings or radial sectors with alternating polarities are provided. However, with respect to the concentric ring configuration of Baermann '532, the effective orientation for the concentric ring design is limited because of the assumption that all blood vessels will cross through the center of the device. The Baermann '532 device becomes progressively less effective as blood vessels are positioned away from the center until the device is non-effective at its peripheral outer ring, where a blood vessel will only transverse one pole with no increase in blood flow. The reverse is true for the radial sector configuration of Baermann '532 where the device's effectiveness decreases as blood vessels are positioned away from the periphery and toward the center. The Baermann '532 Patent states that the concentric ring device, which is his preferred embodiment, can be universally oriented on a body site. However, the Baermann '532 "body site" is limited to an area where blood vessels traverse across the center of the device and therefore the therapeutic effects of the magnetic pad on the blood vessels covered by the area of the pad is diminished because of the necessity for all blood vessels to traverse the center.
The advantage of the placement of the present invention is that it takes into account all random positions of the blood vessels relative to the location of the device. The present invention maximizes the effective area underneath the pad. It works as well for a blood vessel traversing near the periphery as it does for a blood vessel traversing the center of the pad.
The device of the present invention is made from a ferrite material which is magnetized and impregnated within a rubbery synthetic material. With the present invention, more varied orientations of alternating polarities of magnetic poles with respect to the body site blood vessels are accomplished in a spiral orientation, which insures that blood vessels must cross alternating poles at any angle or position across the therapeutic pad.
In the present invention, the poles of the same polarity are in staggered positions, which means that no two poles of the same polarity are adjacent to each other. The present invention insures that blood vessels crossing a pole of one polarity will cross another pole of opposite polarity without exceeding the effective therapeutic distance between poles of 4 to 10 mm, as claimed in the Latzke '711 patent. Specifically, Latzke '711 states at column 3, lines 9-13, that magnetic sheets having alternating positive and negative poles in strips 2 mm apart, are too close for therapeutic purposes. Latzke '711 further states at column 3, lines 13-18, that strips of alternating polarity 5 mm are especially satisfactory.
A study by Dr. Ted Zablotsky of October, 1989 entitled "The Activation of Permanent Magnets in Musculoskeletal Injuries" in undated commercial literature entitled "The Science of Biomagnetics," discusses the Baermann '532 patent and alleges on page 19, line 2 and 3 that "every blood vessel" except for those perpendicular to the skin, will cross a series of north and south Poles. Zablotsky illustrates his theory with a drawing FIG. 3 on page 19 thereof, which shows three ideal blood vessel positions across the Baermann '532 device, where the vessel is located close to or at the center of the pad. In reality, however, this ideal arrangement of blood vessels cannot be expected.
In short, the Baermann '532 device has no poles which alternate circumferentially, except for an alternate embodiment with "pie piece" shaped sectors adjacent to each other in a radial arrangement. However, this alternate embodiment of the Baermann '532 device is only effective near the peripheral areas of the device, since a blood vessel traversing at or near the center of the pad will substantially pass only through one polarity, crossing the pad from "north to north" or "south to south only.
As mentioned, the aforesaid Latzke '711 patent claims an effective therapeutic range in pole width of each pole of 4 to 10 millimeters. Therefore, the Baermann '532 device cannot overcome the limitations of the concentric ring design by adding more rings in a more densely packed arrangement since decreasing the width of the rings to less than 4 mm would be of no therapeutic value. Therefore, the Baermann '532 device is limited in the number of rings used in the device since the width of the rings must decrease as the number of rings increases.
To summarize, in the Baermann '532 device having concentric ring versions shown in FIGS. 1, 3 and 4 in the Baermann '532 patent (and illustrated herein as drawing FIGS. 5 & 6), the Baermann '532 magnetic impregnated pad has a decreasing effect as the orientation of the blood vessel leaves the center of the pad and approaches the periphery of the pad where it will not be exposed to alternating polarities.
Likewise, in the Baermann '532 pie sector version shown in FIG. 2 (and illustrated in drawing FIGS. 7 & 8 herein), the pad therein will have decreasing effect on blood vessel flow as the orientation of the blood vessel leaves the periphery and approaches the center where it will not be exposed to alternating polarities.